Michael Kliën in collaboration with Dramaturge Steve Valk,
premiered 2006

performed as part of MOVE - CHOREOGRAPHING YOU - Art and Dance since the 1950s at Hayward Gallery, London.

Choreography: Michael Kliën
Dramaturgy: Steve Valk
Music: Volkmar Klien
Artistic Collaboration: Jeffrey Gormly
Lighting: Dave Guy
Duration: approx. 90 minutes.

Cast (Hayward): Nerma Cridge, Jeffrey Gormly, Jonzi D, Laura Dannequin, Penny Fieldings, Nina Kellgren, Gideon Koppel, Harvey Rendell

filmed off by: Conor Connolly
editing: Christina Gangos

“Choreography is not to constrain movement into a set pattern, it is to provide a cradle for movement to find its own patterns - over and over again - to prevent a body – whether bound by skin or habits – from stagnation and enable lightness, a primal energy and possibilities only to be found once relations start dancing.” KLIËN

6 Citizens, chosen both locally and internationally, are working on 7 monolithic blackboards spread throughout a large open space. Actively drawing on the blackboards over a set period of time, they follow exact, rehearsed procedures, developing and exchanging insights and individual expressions in various, immediate communicative forms, weaving their relations into a concentrated collective dance of minds. At times the process is supported by electronic music by long-term collaborator Volkmar Kliën. Once the choreography has come to an end a landscape of drawings is left for display. Observers are free to walk, sit, converse as well as read in an arena setting throughout the process.

A silent and communal matrix of six individuals “dreaming the real” imprints a landscape of marks and meaning on the surfaces of blackboards. Rising thoughts, raw visual thinking and sensual perception form a choreography of self and other - of relations in dialogue, exchange, sedimentation, learning, disintegration, erosion and demise.

Connoting qualities of ritual, audience members bear witness to the events of their immediate reality - to the unpredictable, exploratory dimension of creative thinking inherent in all natural systems. Diverting fingers long enough to release their hold on the situation, the players in CHOREOGRAPHY FOR BLACKBOARDS create a subtle participatory frame - a collective "third space” - for sculpting the flow of a moving universe.

a Daghdha Dance Company production in partnership with the Hayward Gallery with the support of Culture Ireland and the Arts Council.